Introduced into agriculture in the late 1940s, antimicrobials have become an integral component of many different aspects of contemporary life, whether that be agricultural production and food supply or human, animal and environmental health. The global problem of antimicrobial resistance, which is increasingly defining antimicrobial use today, is not new. The last few decades have seen a series of attempts to frame and to regulate antimicrobial use and the drug market in veterinary medicine and animal care across different countries with significant varied economic, scientific and political contexts. Hence while their use as animal growth promoters has been banned in Europe since 2006, antimicrobials are still widely employed for this purpose in the rest of the world.

This panel seeks to look specifically at antimicrobial uses in animal husbandry (from the prescription and use of antimicrobials on farms to the production, marketing and sale of antimicrobial medicine) and the different forms of regulation (professional, institutional or market-oriented) that are applied to antimicrobial use. The panel aims to bring new understanding to the social, technical and economic structures of agri-food production and distribution systems that integrate, and have integrated, antimicrobials as key elements in the processes of livestock farming or, on occasion, have sought to encourage their reduction.

The panel will take an STS approach to raise questions about innovation and transition, resilience and resistance, science and regulation, practice and prescription, that offer new perspectives on the hitherto dominant trajectories of livestock farming. We invite contributions on a range of topics including (but not exclusively):